Erik E. Morales’s novel TOO FAST tackles themes of abuse, illness, and mother-son relationships. Raven, a young New Jerseyan registered nurse, lost her mother to cancer as a child and never knew her father. As a result, she was brought up by the imposing, violent figure of the insomniac Tia Titi (an episode of physical violence against the young Raven is harrowing in the details). Having fallen pregnant at fifteen, Raven decided to raise her child Ricky alone, despite the incessant economic, physical, and emotional toll. The struggle is relayed through a series of curt, almost dismissive flashbacks (dismissive, that is, from Raven’s point of view; her apathy is plain) that do much to shore up the terrible links between past and present trauma.

Equally terrible—in its way—is what Morales describes as the “dismissive condescending trivializing backhanded bitch-slap,” which is the often-employed gambit of a friend, family member, or fellow parent smoothing over the cracks by asserting that nothing is wrong with a child when the mother or father intuits otherwise. Ricky, as he himself puts it, is slow—but Morales wisely shies away from revealing Ricky’s diagnosis. For the purposes of the story, it is enough to see him apprehend the statements of others in a hyper-literal fashion, repeatedly fail aptitude tests, and find himself pigeonholed by the DSM.

As the characters get chapters of their own to expatiate their viewpoints, so Morales carves out regular opportunities to give their voices distinct timbres. Raven has worldliness and a certain amount of snark, but also the expecting-the-worst-but-hoping-for-the-best attitude that comes with surviving trauma. There is, on occasion, a tendency to epigrams that is a little too neat when it comes to Ricky, but his voice is otherwise believable and sympathetic.

The third main character—“Hundred-Dollar Tip Joe,” as Ricky calls him—turns sixty in the course of the novel. He teaches Ricky how to drive, and has conversations with him of a sort that no one else does. We see the incongruity, and Raven is onto it like a flash, warning Ricky against the possibility of sexual advances. Morales has a novelist’s eye for a plot twist, and withholds it until the crucial moment. There are a few quibbles with petty typos – “Martin Luthar King” for “Martin Luther King”; “Rios means rivers Spanish” for “Rios mean rivers in Spanish” – and so on, but they do not overly detract from a remarkable drama that ultimately sows more hope than despair.

In TOO FAST, Erik E. Morales offers a harrowing, heartfelt portrait of lives touched by abuse, neglect, and hope.

~Craig Jones for IndieReader